


let me see the shape of your soul

by Yevynaea



Category: Forever (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Brief ableist language, Canon Rewrite, Character Study, Daemon Touching, Daemons, F/M, Fluff, Immortality, Multi, NaNoWriMo 2016, Non-Graphic Violence, Non-Linear Narrative, Short & Sweet, Temporary Character Death, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000, because shipping, ch1 is a character(s) study, ch2 is a story, ch3 is a coda of sorts, daemon aus are still my freaking jam dude, it's the show...but with daemons, mostly sweet anyway, then the last 2 chapters are post canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-24
Updated: 2016-11-24
Packaged: 2018-09-01 21:35:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8638921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yevynaea/pseuds/Yevynaea
Summary: (If one of them dies, so does the other, just the same as anyone else. The only difference is just that they don’t ever stay dead.)
Forever characters and events + daemons. That's just about it.





	1. a study of souls

(If one of them dies, so does the other, just the same as anyone else. The only difference is just that they don’t ever  _ stay dead _ .)

Rosamund resettles after every death. She disappears in a cloud of Dust, and Henry dies, and they both come climbing out of the river, him nude and her still shedding Dust as she finishes reforming, resettling. She's always been the same; though time and experience and loss and love have changed them both, he's never gone through anything yet quite so altering that she finds a different shape as they clamber out of the water. Rosamund always looks the same as she shakes herself dry, wraps herself over Henry’s shoulders while they wait for Abe and Herut, or the police, to pick them up.

#

Herut settles when Abraham is seventeen, and it isn't anything big or special that decides it. He thought they might settle when he sees his dad die for the first time at fourteen-- he knew before then, but seeing it is another matter-- and then again at fifteen the first time he kisses a girl,  _ really  _ kisses her, not just a peck on the cheek or a chaste brush of lips. But Herut doesn't settle on either day.

The day she does settle on is a little cloudy, but warm other than a bit of wind. Abe is doing homework on his bed, Herut a small, odd, sand-colored fox curled at his side, the sound of their parents talking and laughing coming from the kitchen while Abe’s mom makes lasagna, and Abe smiles, content, and something, just,  _ clicks _ . Abraham and Herut look at each other, surprised, and then Herut’s tail begins to wag, and Abe laughs, grinning, breathless.

#

She resettles after every death. Recently, he is Adam, and she is Nona, and she’s a raven, keen and cunning, ruffling her feathers dry as they climb out of the water, nipping at his ear where she perches on his shoulder. (A raven is fairly inconspicuous, if a little uncommon; certainly not a surprising daemon for Doctor Lewis Farber to have.)

When he was young, actually young, still barely done growing from a boy into a man, she was Cassia, and she was a fallow deer, gentle and deceptively fragile looking. Between deer and raven there have been seven other shapes, seven other people time’s passage has turned them into. Before Nona she was Wisdom, and before that Bellona. Before the raven came a barn owl, dark-feathered and intimidating, and before that a blue krait, small and venomous.

#

Abigail always keeps a small capsule of metal and glass around her neck, for Willahelm, but he’s rarely inside it. Her daemon prefers to be in her hair, or on top of her ear, or, occasionally, usually when she’s ignoring him or when he wants to see something closer, right on the tip of her nose. (Abigail meets Doctor Henry Morgan with a baby in her arms, and a bumblebee on her nose, and Henry grins like this is the best thing he’s ever seen. His pine marten daemon is wrapped around his neck like a scarf, curious black eyes gleaming as she stretches forward to let Will bump her nose in a friendly introduction.)

#

Rafael settles when Jo is fourteen, which everyone says is on the early side, but still within the range of normal. They don’t feel normal, though, not when they’re the first in the ninth grade to settle, and not later when most of her peers have settled into more common shapes, or less conspicuous ones. Occasionally a classmate will ask what he is, if he’s some kind of dog, and someone else will always interrupt with a reply along the lines of “of course he’s not a dog, stupid,  _ look  _ at him!”

They get cautious glances in the hallways, and on the street. Even years later, when she introduces herself as a detective, the people she speaks to always seem to spend more time glancing nervously at Rafael than paying attention to Jo herself. Sean is the first exception in a while, barely glancing at the jackal at her side before meeting Jo’s eyes with a smile on his face. His cat daemon slinks forward, almost shy, and stretches up to bump Rafael’s nose. (After Sean dies, Jo gets worse and worse, and Rafael shows it.)

Henry is the next exception. At first, he looks at them like a puzzle to figure out -- but, then again, he looks at most people like that. He launches right into solving the case with her, into being allies, colleagues, friends, and doesn’t ever seem to hesitate before smiling at Jo and her daemon both. (He doesn’t ever talk to Rafael, or anyone else’s daemon, but that’s fine. Jo understands that’s kind of a new phenomenon, one that not everyone’s grown comfortable with yet. She doesn’t consider Henry too old fashioned for it.)

#

Mike Hanson knows he and Dana are a little bit of a cliche. A detective with a hound dog for a daemon. Hilarious. They’ve heard all the jokes. (They actually kind of like some of those jokes, which Mike will never admit, but Dana’s lolling tongue and wagging tail tend to give them away.)

#

Joanna Reece has found that there are two most common reactions to Myles. The first is wariness; bobcats aren’t big the way bears or rhinos or lions are big, but they’re not common in city environments, and they’re predators more than similarly-sized dogs or domestic cats are. The second is respect, and that’s the reaction Joanna prefers, even if she knows as well as anyone that making assumptions based on someone’s daemon can sometimes come back to bite you.

#

It’s mainly coincidence that Sienna settles as a phantasmal poison frog, the scarlet stripes on her skin just barely darker than the shade her name would imply. Molly introduces herself to clients as Iona, and introduces Sienna as Ruby, and Ruby chirps, high pitched and bright, from where she sits on Iona’s shoulder.

#

Philomena doesn’t want to settle. Lucas is insistent, for about six years of their childhood, that she won’t, that she’ll be able to change “forever and ever and ever and ever and ever,” like some of the wizards and superheroes in the comic books and cartoons they like. Lucas stops saying this at age eleven, but it’s still just a tiny bit disappointing four years later when Phil turns into a hedgehog in algebra class, to roll a note over to a cute girl for him, and promptly gets stuck.

#

Clark Walker’s rattlesnake daemon is wound loosely around his neck when he comes to Henry’s lab. When Henry kills him, is forced to kill him, the snake disappears, but the body stays. Adam calls, later, and Doctor Farber and his raven are on the other end of the line, outside across the street. Rosamund’s fur puffs up even more than it had been, and she presses herself close to Henry.

#

Sean had an Egyptian Mau daemon, Ariel, speckled and sleek and grey. Isaac has a cat too, but Joyce is a Bengal; she doesn’t look the same -- she isn’t the same. Jo doesn’t know if the shape of Isaac’s daemon has any bearing, subconsciously, on how much she likes him (or how much she doesn’t). She hopes not, and she tries not to let it. They don’t end up working out anyway.

#

(Henry injects Adam with the paralytic, and Rosamund bares her teeth at Nona, who spreads her wings in a threat.

They die, again, and come back, again, resettling easily into the same shape, and they have barely a day before Jo and Rafael are at the door with Henry’s watch, and an old photo, and a quite a few questions.

(Adam and Nona are trapped in a hospital bed where they can’t harm anyone, and Jo and Rafael learn the truth and accept it. Without any great swords hanging over their heads, Henry and Rosamund feel, for the first time in awhile, quite content.))


	2. touch

(The first time Henry touched Willahelm, it was completely by accident. He’d gone to brush Abigail’s hair behind her ear, and hadn’t noticed in time that Will was perched there. The bumblebee had taken flight, trying to get out of the way of Henry’s hand, but his legs brushed one finger. All four involved had shivered, tiny electric shocks going up their spines. Henry and Rosamund stepped back, out of Abigail’s space, Henry apologizing profusely as Will settled in Abigail’s hair. Then Abigail laughed, waving his apologies away.

“It wasn’t so bad, just a surprise,” she smiled, stepping forward to close the distance between them.)

The first time Henry touches Rafael, it is very much on purpose, but it is still not an action he has time to think through. Henry curses himself for thinking he should come here alone, curses the fact that Jo followed him, curses the fact that they were outnumbered and taken by surprise. Rosamund is wrapped tightly around his neck but Henry still feels cold at the sight of the apparently  _ functional  _ silver guillotine in the warehouse, and the men arguing over whether to test it out on their handy new hostages.

Jo doesn’t have her gun; one of the men had tackled her, taken it. She’s on her knees with her arms wrapped tight around Rafael, holding him close, face buried in his fur, and Henry knows that making herself look smaller and scared is a ploy, but that doesn’t mean the fear isn’t at all genuine. He stands as close to her as he dares, hands up in surrender because two of their captors still have guns trained on them.

“We don’t have time to test it, they might have already called for backup!” One man says, tarantula daemon shifting nervously on his shoulder.

“So what? Dealing with their severed friend will distract the rest of them, we can use it to buy ourselves time,” argues another, his mongoose daemon baring her teeth viciously.

Jo  _ did  _ call Hanson, before she followed Henry here, and told him not to raise the alarms, to come be her backup because she wasn’t sure what she was dealing with yet. She doesn’t know if one more detective really counts as ‘backup’, but at this point she’ll take it.

“Which one?” Says one guy; Jo isn’t sure if it’s the same one as before.

“The cop first,” The man with the mongoose speaks again. Jo’s breath catches, fear making her heart beat double-time as Rafael whines, shifts closer to her.

“No!” Henry and Rosamund both exclaim, but they don’t have time to say more, because--

“NYPD! Weapons down!” Hanson yells.

This doesn’t have the intended effect, because that’s when the shooting starts. Jo dives sideways, rolling away from her captors with Rafael right next to her, hoping Henry has the sense to get out of the way too.

Henry goes to tackle the closest of their captors, and succeeds, but then gets a punch to the face for his troubles. Rosamund flinches violently at the pain, digs her small claws into Henry’s shoulders to get him to move, and he scrambles away, following Jo. He and Rosamund both feel an ice-cold chill at the sight of the detective bleeding from one leg, Rafael clearly feeling her pain but still trying to nudge her into movement as one of their captors approaches, mongoose grinning on his shoulder, gun aimed not at Jo but at her  _ daemon _ .

Henry moves without thinking, diving forward, wrapping his arms around Rafael protectively as the shot goes off. He hears the gunshot, then nothing but ringing, and he feels Rosamund go very tense around his neck, feels the pain of a bullet lodged in his heart, feels a thousand lightning strikes at every point where his skin touches Rafael’s fur.

Hanson, with excellent timing, shoots the man in the shoulder, and he goes down hard, mongoose already beginning to shed Dust. Henry looks first at Mike’s wide eyes, then at Jo’s, and then he lets go of Rafael, falling. He doesn’t feel his head hit the ground, but he definitely feels the shock of cold water, and he reaches for Rosamund even as she starts to reform next to him.

They wait in the water for as long as they can stand, then make their way toward shore. The sky is dark, which Henry is grateful for because it means fewer people that might see him, but it also means it’s colder out than day would be, and he and Rosamund are both shivering violently by the time Jo’s car pulls up.

Rafael gets out ahead of her, barely waiting for Jo before he’s bounding forward, stopping just shy of crashing into Henry’s legs. Rosamund climbs down from Henry’s shoulders to greet him. Jo is close on Rafael’s heels, of course, and wraps a blanket tight around Henry’s shoulders.

“Hanson saw,” Henry says, not really a question.

“He’s driving,” Jo replies. “Dana had more to say, actually. I think Mike might be in shock a little bit.”

“I’m glad you don’t stay dead,” Rafael says to Rosamund, who climbs happily onto his back, half for the contact and half to leech his body heat.

“Thank you,” Jo says solemnly. Henry can only nod.

(The first time Abigail touches Rosamund, she lets her hand hover above the pine marten’s head, looking to Henry for permission where he sits next to her. Henry nods, and Rosamund seems to agree, pushing her head up happily against Abigail’s gentle hand.)

The first time Jo touches Rosamund, the four of them are in the back of Jo’s car with Hanson and Dana in the front, Hanson driving all of them back to the antique store, while elsewhere in the city a silver guillotine and its owners are dealt with by a great number of cops.

Jo’s hand is tight on Rafael’s scruff where he’s laying next to her. Henry, on her other side, has one arm wrapped around her, which she allows even though he smells like the river, and they’re mostly just trying to fend off Mike and Dana’s questions until they get the shop, but a thought rises to the front of Jo’s mind and she doesn’t have time to stop it before it leaves her mouth.

“Can I touch her?” She asks Henry, and Rosamund perks up, barely waiting for her human to voice permission before she’s moving forward, unwinding herself from Henry’s neck and wrapping around Jo’s instead. Jo gasps, and Henry looks a little breathless, and Mike is yelling suddenly about public displays of affection and bad timing and the overlap thereof, but Rafael is laughing, an odd, barking sound, and Rosamund is chittering happily as she settles her head on Jo’s shoulder.

(They enter the shop together, holding hands, Henry’s free hand on Rafael’s head with Rosamund draped over Jo’s shoulders, Mike and Dana behind them still being loud and curious, Abe and Herut ahead of them exchanging a smug, knowing glance.)


	3. future

((The first time Rosamund resettles into something new, Henry is nearing five hundred years old, and he climbs out of the water with a grey fox tailing close at his feet, dripping water and Dust. Henry goes for the set of clothes he has hidden nearby, waiting for him, and by the time he’s got them on a car’s pulled up, parked on the side of the road, headlights bright.

Rosamund keeps close to him, shaking herself solid, and they don’t discuss her new shape as they make their way to the car. Henry opens the rear passenger-side door. Rosamund hops inside before he slides after her. The driver glances at them in the rearview mirror, grinning a very sharp, satisfied sort of grin at what he sees. His scorpion daemon clicks her oil-black claws shut a few times in a strange imitation of laughter.

“She suits you, Henry,” Adam jokes. Henry sighs, half out of exhaustion and half out of annoyance.

“Can we just go home?” He asks. “I’d prefer to talk about this later.”

“What’s there to talk about?” Adam keeps grinning his sharp, satisfied grin as he pulls away from the curb.

The drive home is silent, for the most part. Rosamund rests her head on Henry’s leg, and he pets her head, both of them silent and thoughtful.))

**Author's Note:**

> daemons whose forms were not explicitly/specifically identified:  
> Henry:Rosamund - European pine marten.  
> Jo:Rafael - Black-backed jackal.  
> Mike:Dana - Bavarian mountain hound.  
> Abigail:Willahelm - buff-tailed bumblebee.  
> Abe:Herut - kit fox.


End file.
